I recently watched an intriguing webinar from VitalSmarts that look at research into personal motivation. Joseph Grenny interviewed Chester Elton and Adrian Gostick, researchers and co-authors of What Motivates Me? where they discovered 23 unique motivators which can be classified into  five general categories. They explain the premise for the book here:

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One of the concepts I found most interesting from the webinar is a diagram they shared. They shared that the most engaged employees find the intersection of their personality – who they are – their strengths – what they are good at – and their motivators – what they are passionate about. They said generally our personality and strengths are quite stable, but it is in fact our motivators that can change a lot throughout life.

They also found that our job satisfaction is an important contributor to our overall life satisfaction. So it is important for leaders to first discover what motivates themselves and then discover what motivates others so that that our work environments can positively impact other areas of our lives. Build good work experiences and you will help to build good families and good communities.